When it's just too plum pooped, too physically exhausted to get out and roam the glorious Sunday backroads of Georgia and other points closely beyond..? Why, the Internet, of course..

Can always tell when it happens because some topic of popular conversation online that has, until that point, been kept carefully at bay from my curiosity moves front and foremost for the day.. Today, it's Web 2.0, that yet another relatively new catch phrase in web development,..

It all began today because I came across the very simple to edit file that is the dictionary for my SeaMonkey email client, the en-US.dic in the components/myspell directory.. All I wanted to do was find out what the various acronyms next to the majority of words represent so that I can duplicate properly and as needed in adding my own words to the list from here on out..

Next thing I know, here I go off on another tangent veering instantly from the en-US.dic file to Web 2.0, kind of like Bugs Bunny's notoriously missed Left Turn at Albuquerque.. It appears this leg of the journey, this quest to discover Web 2.0 will be no easy task to decipher as those who are "writing" it may not necessarily agree on everything themselves, well, moreso than is usual on a topic of this nature, anyway..

Ok, been at it a few minutes already, and best as I can figure, it has something to do with.. the Web.. (Ar, ar, Humor.. ;) )

If I wasn't so stubborn about patronizing them lately because of the insider squabbling, I might could turn immediately to Wikipedia for some initial leads, but, nah.. Until they start playing nicer with each other over there, I'd just rather go somewhere that is one person who at best is arguing with him- or herself.. Digs given don't ever seem to be quite as personally motivated in those cases..

Did find the Web 2.0 Workgroup.. Without delving tooo far into things, this reference to the Web 2.0 Workgroup is, at first glance, a subdomain of, in other words housed by, Eurekster.. Eurekster provides, in their words, "community search and monetization".. A quick overall glance at their website says that they offer the opportunity to build intuitive search engines for wherever one may choose to place them..

So now, on to their product, the Swicki.. Again in their words, "A search engine that learns from your community's search behavior".. This, I gotta see..

Next step is to take them up on their offer to create my own Swicki.. Step One is basic.. Name it, give it a few starter words to play with, and colorize it..

Step Two, they get cutesy (we like "cutesy"), we're going to "train" our Swicki.. Here we tell it if we want it to search our site only, the web only, blogs only, or some combination of all of the above.. We can also tell it to specifically include or exclude (block) particular Internet URLs..

Welp, just implemented it into the Current Month page of my own ongoing "beta" project, Georgia Disability Advocates' Calendar.. It didn't validate at first (XHTML 1.1) without changing out the ampersands (&) to read as &amp; in the markup, oh, and with wrapping a tiny bit of text in <p></p>..

NOTE TO SELF: Based on the Terms and Conditions you must accept to use Swicki, I'm probably already in trouble here so will definitely need to forward on a suggestion for them to offer several backwards and frontwards compatible markup options when a Swicki is created..

Overall, pretty happy with the initial test run of it, though, if for no other reason than it put my website at the top of its search results.. Tee hee...

The color scheme will take some tweaking, unfortunately, which, in this kind of case, usually means a hair loss factor of probably about three, strands that is, being expected for the effort.. (What appears simple and common sense for some is often a beast of a battle for others, no matter how many times they've done something over and over and..... :grimace: )

The problem is that my CSS markup is causing the links to be washed out.. Will have to play some more with it and see if maybe their none/none option of color is what will work best in Advocates Calendar's case.. Only Time will tell..

Ah, but I digress.. What WAS the original point of all of this..? Oh, right.. What is Web 2.0..? And the answer is..

Who the Frip cares..? Been distracted by another something shiny, another new nerdette toy to experiment with and the rest of the afternoon will be spent traveling the highways and biways of this puter's transistors and circuits.. Wanna go with..? :D

Update #1 Yup, the none/none color combination choice was perfect, was all that was needed to default to the website's choice for background and anchors (links).. Perfect.. Just need to wrap my Swicki in divs (<div></div>) to control its margins et al(l)..

Tags: Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Workgroup, Eurekster, Swicki, Something Shiny, Search Engine, Advocates Calendar, Georgia Disability Advocates Calendar, Seamonkey, Georgia, Restless Spirit, Bugs Bunny, Internet, Website, CSS, XHTML, Nerdette, Web Development.